> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://rebelnews.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Venezuela: Imperialism, post-Chavismo, and Resistance from Below - URL: https://rebelnews.ghost.io/venezuela-imperialism-post-chavismo-and-resistance-from-below/ - Published: 2026-01-27T20:32:48.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-01T07:53:49.000Z - Author: Mike Gonzalez - Tags: Features, International, News, Opinion, Chavez, chavismo, imperialism, Latin America, madura, oil, Trump, US imperialism, Venezuela, #Migrated-1790841191722, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-01 07:53 Donald Trump described the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president, as “like a television programme”. But the bombs that were dropping on key points in and around Caracas were very real. Fuerte Tiuna, for example, a military complex, and the La Carlota airfield are in the city centre, La Guaira is the major port. But the main objective was the presidential palace, Miraflores, also in the heart of the city in a busy residential area. From the hillside barrios they watched the helicopter gunships overhead, the armed might of the US deployed to kidnap a president. Just as significant was the bombing of El Cuartel de la Montaña, the tomb of Hugo Chávez. It was a symbolic strike, but a revealing one. Why have all recent US presidents been obsessed with Venezuela – Bush, Biden, and Obama as well as Trump? Trump claims Venezuela is centrally involved in drug trafficking, for which there is no evidence other than Washington’s insistence on the role of the so-called Cartel de los Soles, a shadowy group of military within the government involved with criminals and the drug cartels. The allegation has now been dropped, without explanation. The main drug routes into the US are in fact along the Pacific coast through Mexico and Central America. The over 100 people killed in the bombing of fishing boats in the Caribbean were minor figures in the local trade in marijuana. They certainly didn’t merit sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. But it provided cover for the attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro, which escaped any kind of oversight from Congress or Senate because it was defined as a policing operation, which, unlike an act of military aggression, needs no congressional approval. ### Oil and Politics There are two main explanations for the Venezuelan incursion. [One is oil](https://rebelnews.ghost.io/5-points-on-trumps-power-grab-in-venezuela/). Venezuela’s reserves are 17% of the world’s oil. It is “heavy”, requiring refining which is complex and expensive. The shale oil that makes up the US’s main supply of oil is expensive and difficult to collect, but the cost of refining Venezuelan oil, where the minimum wage is less than a dollar, was and will be a fraction of the cost in the U.S. That is one reason why all the main oil multinationals invested there. When it became necessary to update and modernise the technology in 1975, Venezuela’s oil was “nationalised” – shifting the burden of re-investment onto Venezuela while the profits still flowed north. The second reason is political. Hugo Chávez, a military officer from a poor background, was elected president in 1998\. His programme promised a genuine nationalisation of the country’s oil reserves, shifting the income from oil exports to the creation of social programmes to benefit the poor and working class of the country. These programmes, or Missions as they were called, created a national medical service, an educational system open to all and a housing programme. The new Bolivarian Constitution promised a participatory democracy, releasing a “pink tide” inspired by Chávez’s programme, for example in Bolivia and Ecuador, aimed at controlling the extractive industries – oil, gas, copper, and water – and reclaiming their revenues. ### Attacking Chavismo For global capital this was intolerable; as soon as Chávez was elected, the bourgeoisie and its imperial allies set about sabotaging the Bolivarian process. But again and again they failed in the face of the massive popular support Chávez enjoyed. In 2002 the business sector and sections of the military kidnapped Chávez until tens of thousands of poor Venezuelans came down from their barrios in the hills, surrounded the presidential palace and freed their president. The event is recorded in a brilliant documentary made by two Irish film makers, [The revolution will not be televised](https://vimeo.com/513876099?ref=rebelnews.ghost.io). It was not a revolution but it did give the working class and poor a taste of what it was like to exercise their own collective power. The promise of participatory democracy in which the working classes would control their own destiny won the enthusiastic support of the majority of the population as they had so long been denied access to their own resources. The basis of Chávez’s Bolivarian programme was national independence and sovereignty, the creation of a progressive nation-state and an authentic participatory democracy which he called *Socialism of the 21st Century.* Venezuela has the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas as well as key minerals, like coltan, lithium and vanadium, not to mention gold. The promise of Chavismo, to break the stranglehold of global capital, seemed possible in Chávez’s early days, when oil prices hit an unprecedented high. It would have been a moment to open real possibilities of an alternative route to national independence, to develop new industries and investment strategies. But this would have meant breaking the dependence on the world market, producing for need rather than for the highest profit. The oil revenues could have funded the diversification of Venezuela’s economy and enabled it to escape the straitjacket of dependence on extractive economies and world commodity prices, over which the producing countries had no control. ### Trump’s Agenda 25 years later that reality is driven home by Trump’s invasion and his assertion that “we’re going to take back the oil stolen from us”, as if Venezuela’s resources were not the property of its people. Trump has exposed what imperialism means, as is set out in his National Security Strategy’ of November last year. This is openly declared as the pursuit of the American national interest whatever the cost, seizing monopoly control of the oil and of the minerals that drive industry and new technology. In 2026 that means confronting his competitors, principally China, which has established its own imperial project with investments on a massive scale in Africa and Latin America, including Venezuela, and which could win the race for new technologies, challenging US domination. Trump quotes the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th century declaration that the western hemisphere belonged to America. As Monroe put it then, the old empires, Spain and Britain must now give way to the “manifest destiny” of the United States to run and control half the planet. In Trump’s version, the seizure of assets and raw materials will extend beyond the Americas, taking Latin America as its backyard and Greenland for its oil and rare earth minerals. The US has always been driven by its military power at the service of capital. Since the beginning of the 20th century it has repeatedly invaded the southern continent, from supporting a military coup in Guatemala against the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz on behalf of the United Fruit Company, to the imposition of vicious military regimes in Argentina and Brazil in the sixties, to the destruction of the government of Allende in Chile in 1973\. In Venezuela, Trump’s imperial ambitions have led him to assume direct control. But in every case the objective is the control of the raw materials that fuels industrial production and an expanding global capitalism. What began with the kidnapping of Maduro may prove to be the first step in the battle for monopoly control of these resources. The attack on Venezuela is global capital’s revenge on the programme of Chávez and the political current he represented; his socialism of the 21st century interfered with the free movement of capital across the globe. World leaders have called for a recognition of international law and negotiation through the United Nations. Trump and Netanyahu gave their answer in Gaza. The kidnapping of a sitting president is specifically forbidden in international law but Maduro is in handcuffs in court faced with charges of drug and arms trafficking with no proof. Trump and his ideological backers, like the Heritage Foundation and the Foro de Madrid, have made it clear that, in his New American century, ruthless violence, naked self-interest and competition between capitals will be the forces that shape the world – and there will be no quarter given. Genocide has become a legitimate instrument of conquest and any notion of international law is powerless wherever there are profits to be carved out by extreme exploitation. ### A cynical deal María Corina Machado, daughter of one of her country’s wealthiest families, and brief owner of the Nobel Peace Prize before she gave it to Trump, led a violent right-wing opposition to undermine the Chávez project from the beginning. But Trump has now withdrawn his backing for her, acknowledging that she lacked support. We now know that the post-Maduro government will be led by Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, and that most of the existing Chavista leadership will remain in Trump’s promised protectorate. Most people were astonished by the news, which was followed by shots of Caracas’s empty streets, which were characterised by the Right as calm. That is not what the frightened and demoralised inhabitants describe. It was the silence of fear after the display of sheer destructive power over the city. Clearly what lay behind Trump’s decision was containment in the aftermath of the attacks. The US military had previously concluded that the overthrow of Maduro could lead to widespread violence. Without the continuing control of the Chavista bureaucracy, there would have been a reaction from the people, and against the return of the viciously anti-Chávez right, which would certainly retaliate against Chavistas. The decision to return the existing bureaucracy to power, minus a few of its original members, is evidence of this collusion between Trump and elements of the Chavista leadership. Indications suggest one general turned and provided the Americans with information on Maduro’s whereabouts. While Maduro is to go on trial in the coming days, and no doubt be subject to public humiliation, it is unclear whether or not he will return as his ex-colleagues now back in power are demanding. If that did happen, it would not be to return and lead resistance to the occupation, which he made no attempt to mobilise in practice as president, but to legitimise the new collaborationist regime, as the members of Maduro’s government have already done. Before the attack, Defence Minister Padrino López promised that 4 million militias would defend Venezuela. Yet there was no reaction, no call to arms, no mobilization of the popular organizations. It is clear that there was no intention to resist on the part of the so-called Chavista leadership which presents a unified face but which is internally divided into several factions that are likely to become involved in an internal battle for power while controlling and containing the population. Trump’s assumption is that they can contain internal conflict in conditions of deepening economic crisis as Venezuelans pay the price of war. Trump has said he will send his own appointees to run the oil industry together with the bureaucratic state, which despite the country’s enormous reserves is in a poor condition after years of mismanagement and neglect. Trump has already promised huge subsidies to the multinationals. It will be the Venezuelan population that pays for that as public spending collapses and the oil earnings will take years to become available. We know that Trump’s views on how to run a state involve extreme violence, the suppression of personal and civil liberties and pernicious racist immigration policies. It will be no surprise if state violence increases in Venezuela too as the majority population begins to realise that they will bear the cost of the extraction of Maduro’s government, and as they seek to defend the capacity of the collective organisations – trade unions, cooperatives, collectives etc – to develop their own response. The truth is that the Chavista leadership reached a cynical accommodation with imperialism to ensure their own political survival. And that will not be lost on the millions of Venezuelans who mobilised in support of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution. ### From Chávez to Maduro For the left across the world, Chávez’s election in 1998 and his Bolivarian Constitution were a source of hope and inspiration, of anti-imperialism in practice. But after his mysterious death in 2013, the government of his replacement, Maduro, oversaw a deepening economic crisis. There was widespread economic sabotage and massive shortages of food and medicines, which were due to the inefficiencies and corruption of the state sector as well as widespread US sanctions. Though Maduro insisted that his government was the continuation of Chavismo, and exploited Chávez’s image and popularity at every turn, it was run by a new layer of people who had made careers, and a great deal of money, in the state bureaucracy which was rife with corruption. More importantly, the grassroots organisations – trade unions, cooperatives and community organisations – which were supposed to be the foundation of 21st century socialism, and the PSUV (‘the United Socialist Party of Venezuela’), were controlled from above and increasingly repressed. The new bureaucracy, still calling itself Chavista, used the PSUV as an instrument of patronage and manipulation. As the economic crisis grew worse, 7 million Venezuelans left the country in search of work and as a reaction against state repression. Some exiles joined demonstrations on January 3rd praising Trump for arresting Maduro. The awakening will come very soon as Trump takes all the country’s oil profits and people will again be facing scarcity and shortages on a massive scale. The majority of those who left – the poor – crossed the borders to Colombia, Peru and Chile or north to the US, where they would find themselves persecuted or threatened with expulsion. Meanwhile a new state bureaucracy, claiming to continue the policies and ideas of Chávez, grew wealthy on corruption and the diversion of state funds, while the internal gulf between rich and poor was visibly widening within Venezuela. The armed forces enjoyed major privileges – higher wages, housing, special shops and so on – as the government was increasingly militarised and the state party, the PSUV, was an instrument of patronage and control for the new bourgeoisie, the *boliburguesía.* The PSUV became an instrument of control and patronage, through schemes like the CLAPS, the distribution of food to members. It still carried the weight of Chávez’s reputation, despite the obvious privileges enjoyed by those who claimed his inheritance. The Chavista bureaucracy became increasingly repressive, not only of the right-wing opposition, but of working-class organisations, trade unions,and critics from within Chavismo. Maduro’s announcement of the Arco Minero project was an early sign. It referred to the Orinoco Basin, some 12% of the national territory; it is a rich biodiverse area and the location of much of Venezuela’s mineral wealth. The project Maduro announced amounted to the privatisation of those resources, opening them to multinationals, including Chevron, and to foreign interests. It was a plan that Chávez had rejected before his death because of its environmental and social impact. Not only was the project implemented but the whole area was placed under military control, as was much of the oil industry. The Chavista project remains in the popular memory in Venezuela, but it is not the Chavismo of an authoritarian state. From Trump’s point of view it made sense to deal with the existing government which still had some authority and sway over the majority. The news reports outside Venezuela showed people celebrating. Some were refugees who were deluded enough to imagine that Trump would bring democracy to the country and dismantle the authoritarian structures Maduro had created. The bourgeoisie had no such illusions. From their safe refuge in Miami and Spain they echoed María Corina’s call to abolish the Missions – the social programmes that had flourished under Chávez – and to privatise the oil industry. It is very likely that there will be cracks within the government as new opportunities for power emerge while Trump and his right-wing allies take revenge on the Chávez project. ### Ripples across Latin America Chávez himself was deeply committed to the idea of a united Latin American front against imperialism. Faced with Trump’s constant threats, that will be hard to build between governments, many of whom have also compromised, or are frightened at the prospect of forever wars. But internationally and across Latin America a different kind of solidarity movement can be built with trade unions, popular organisations, cooperatives and the Latin American left. The first test may be Cuba as Rubio and Trump have threatened. Cuba is dependent on Venezuelan oil and economic support. If that lifeline is cut, there will be devastating consequences. Cuban medics and teachers who staffed the Venezuelan missions will be sent back, though that will produce a reaction among the poor and working class with whom they were popular. Will the Venezuelan leadership bow to Trump’s attitudes to Cuba? Maduro did not lead a revolutionary government but a corrupt bureaucracy. Nevertheless, his kidnapping and trial sends a message to every Latin American leader with an independent project. Lula, the Brazilian president and a symbol of independent politics, has condemned Trump’s threats. A different faction of chavismo has taken over in Venezuela, but it has already made very clear that, far from defending Chávez’s radical programme of transformations it has accommodated to Trump and represents a ruling class defending its own interests and not those of the country’s poor and working class. There will be resistance as the situation deteriorates. It will take many forms when the initial shock of the invasion has passed. Every example, however limited, should be supported by the left outside the country. The defence of Venezuela is an international obligation. If “Hands off Venezuela” is a slogan heard across the world it will be possible to support and inspire that resistance. In the face of Trump’s neo-fascism and aggression, international solidarity can inspire resistance. And in the US itself the growing anti-Trump protests are the beginning of such a movements, as the response to the Minneapolis murder by ICE has shown. The supine attitude of Congress and Senate and the hesitation of politicians in Europe to denounce imperialism suggest that the existing institutions and laws will not work to bring that about. It is a rising tide from below that will give confidence to the real Chavistas in Venezuela and their equivalents across Latin America. Hands off Venezuela, for international solidarity and resistance from below. --- **Read on:** [Mike Gonzalez's on-the-ground account of Chavismo](https://irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/article/view/199?ref=rebelnews.ghost.io), from 2016, from the *Irish Marxist Review*.